A Hiding Place
by Rasielle
Summary: Post-series oneshot. Every few years, Hitomi dreamed of Guymelefs, of the world on fire and Escaflowne tearing through the sky with war on its wings.


Vision of Escaflowne

[did I dream this belief, or did I believe this dream?]  
[31_days: may 17, 2007]

"A Hiding Place"  
Written May 18, 2007

Every few years Hitomi dreamed of Guymelefs, of the world on fire and Escaflowne tearing through the sky with war on its wings. The old fear swept back powerfully every time and just as loudly as the real thing, just as hot and full of smoke. Even in her sleep she broke out into a sweat and smothered back her strangled protests, trembling as she remembered.

A lonely figure on the ground, below the battlefield, Hitomi stretched her neck out into the foul air and cried out with her hatred of violence, all the while searching for Van's face between his dragon's aggression. It never came into sight until the top of Escaflowne became visible, until it took a blast and pitched downward, and fell to the ground, then crashed in a heap of flame.

She never saw his wings unfold, his face as he fell, and he never saw her watching. In Hitomi's chest bloomed her most hated of memories – the feeling of visions, of invisibility, of ghosts.

Hitomi woke every time with her vision blurred. Then, unfailingly, she stepped out onto her balcony and cleared her eyes with the stars, watching carefully as they shone only to fade away at daybreak.

It was not that Hitomi doubted what their sacrifice did for Gaea, nor that she believed Van would once again go to war. It was not that Hitomi believed war could kill him. On occasion, though, on the days when she sleepwalked through school and work and even track practice, her thoughts would wander the green and blue planes of Gaea the way she could not.

She would visit Allen by pearly waves, navigate the humming crowds of Fanelia. She would speak in every tongue, evaluate bad politics and peaceful compromises, and witness close shaves with aggressive neighbors. She would look for Van and find Escaflowne in its hiding place.

She even glimpsed the wedding of Millerna and Dryden, which she foresaw in her tarot cards the one night since Gaea that she, nostalgic, dared to open them. She had held the cards silently and then put a hand to where her pendant used to be, knowing that with her on the Mystic Moon, they were safe.

Hitomi herself was engaged by the time she had her last dream of Guymelefs. She was thirty then, single for a long time under the pretense of a successful track career. Her fiancee was a man she loved on Earth during peacetime. If she had loved him during wartime, she could never tell; she lived in peace to the end of her days.

But before she had ever moved on, Hitomi had a dream, and the man she loved on Earth was not in it. The scenes she loved on Earth were not in it. There was only a field, a dense forest in the distance, and a blue sky that curved lovingly above her. Beneath her sneakers the grass was soft and wet with new rain, and lodged in the blue above was a twin set of moons, as perfect as if they were stolen from her memory.

_This place_, Hitomi thought, reeling even as she remembered she was in a dream and nothing was real. _This place_. She knew it; countless times she had shouted from here, watched fire in the sky and beasts in the air, and felt helpless.

Countless times she had watched Van fall here, die. Hitomi gave a start and glanced around suddenly, her vision darkening as she thought again of the war-bitten world in her dreams.

"Up here, Hitomi." A voice. It came from high above her, distant but ringing with joy, gently carried upon the air.

With a breaking heart, Hitomi knew then that, fire or no fire, she was dreaming. She looked up.

Van's Guymelef was the only one within sight; there were no enemies, no flames, no fights, only rippling green grass as far as the eye could see. For all the wind and tossed clouds, Hitomi thought it was quieter here than the end of the world could allow, and Van atop Escaflowne more impossible. His wings were spread, fanning out from his shoulders, the white of its feathers more blinding than the sun.

_Where are the flames, the soldiers, the earth-brown buildings of Fanelia?_ Hitomi asked herself, stunned and fearing grace. _Why are we together and alone, in such a clear place? Have I died?_

_Van can't have. But I've never had such a dream._ Hitomi stared. He was in the red shirt she remembered, from long ago. "Van."

"It's been a while, Hitomi," Van continued. He was too far up for her to see his face, but Hitomi heard the smile in his voice and felt it resonate with something rising within her, the exact same something that had driven her to run towards him those many, many years ago, away from Amano and Yukari and everything that had never been Gaea.

Hitomi was running. "Van!" she shouted suddenly; she had sprinted her race, finished her dash to the edge of the world, propelled herself forward to run and step into the sky. She was running again.

"Come down, Van! I can't see you from here!"

He came down to meet her.

* * * * *

It turned out that Van had been having the same dreams as she, and somehow they were meant to meet in this dream-state because of it. "Dreams and not reality, right?" Hitomi had asked. "Has it been peaceful in Fanelia?" _Without me?_

Van glanced at her silently, perhaps asking the same question. Their sacrifice towered invisibly between them as they sat side by side, not new to defying fate. "The wars in those dreams are the old ones. Without the power of Atlantis, Gaea has become a safer place," he added, "but emptier somehow."

A pause. "All of us miss you."

"And I miss all of you. It's been a while," she echoed. "For all of these years, I've never stopped worrying, and these new dreams don't help. Is Fanelia on the brink of war?"

"No, not at all," Van said.

"What about Asturia? Have there been any isolated battles?"

"No, and not to my knowledge," he answered again.

"So why are we having these dreams? Why are we sitting here like this?"

"I don't know, Hitomi," Van said calmly. Then he smiled, making Hitomi's joy move in waves within her, and he took her hand and she took his. It felt solid, flesh that would have been flesh on either Gaea or the Mystic Moon. Hitomi still did not know where they were. "I can't tell if you're complaining or not."

"I'm not," she assured him emphatically, tightening her hold. "I'm not. I'm only scared that this is one night's dream and that you'll vanish as soon as it gets light. But those dreams of the great war can't be ordinary. They're like visions."

"Maybe that's what they are," he speculated, and together they thought back darkly on the great war and the disasters that had cropped out of fear alone, built on the power of Atlantis.

"One of us is doubting again," Van admitted carefully, because Hitomi, who had blanched suddenly, would not. But she would not let go of his hand either. "Hitomi," he said seriously, "I promised you that I would never allow another war like the one we suffered before. You don't have to doubt me."

"If I'm not there to watch what's happening on Gaea," to watch you, "then of course I'm going to worry. But I'm not doubting you, Van."

Hitomi took a deep breath. She was older now, wiser, sadder about their separation than ever before. But she would tell him the truth. "I hated the war, and I hated fighting, and sometimes I hated seeing you on top of Escaflowne, but I think I realize now that I can't separate war from my memories of Gaea. You fought in a war, and one day you'll fight in another way, and I won't be there. I might not know what happens to you, but I can't be scared," she finished.

Van didn't answer. The heavy silence cowed Hitomi, so she asked, "How much time do we have here?"

He shifted beside her, retaining his hold on her hand but facing her and leaning over slightly, no longer smiling. "I don't know. Hitomi, I already promised you that I would do everything in my power to keep out of war. I'm never fighting again."

"That can't be," she said sharply. "You're a king. Sooner or later, for your country, you have to fight. If nothing else, the great war proved that, and my telling you to stop fighting only ever held you back."

"Hitomi, I can be a king without fighting."

But Hitomi would not admit that she disbelieved this with all her heart, she knew it to be impossible, she had cried her heart out years ago (and the tears had never run out) because she knew it to be impossible. As they sat together on the grass, Hitomi, barely conscious that it was all a dream, began to imagine rain, a light drizzle that would come in invisible, weeping curtains. She thought she could even feel it very slightly, coming down upon their shoulders as the sadness they held at bay.

She clutched his arm and told him, "These are not the questions I wanted to ask you, Van, after all these years. Asking you about wars and fights – but that's not what I want to know."

"Millerna and Dryden were married a year ago, and the wedding doubled as Dryden's coronation. But everyone knows that Millerna, as the daughter of Asturia, rules the country."

"I know that," Hitomi said happily as Van's eyes widened in confusion. "I saw it in my tarot cards one night. It's not the same as being there, though, especially to see it so different from their last wedding.

Van, are you married yet?"

The drizzle had yielded to a flood of sunlight, which came cutting through the blue to gather in patches on the wet grass. Up above them, the white remnants of scattered clouds crossed the sky as it curved slowly like a dome. "No, I'm not married yet," Van finally admitted, "not that the advisors haven't tried their hardest, though. What about you, Hitomi?"

"But Fanelia needs a queen," Hitomi said with a sad smile. She looked down at their joined hands and waited for a moment. "I'm engaged."

"Ah," Van said.

"But it hasn't changed anything," she continued to say to the grass, to their clasped hands. "I haven't forgotten anything. It hasn't become more important."

"Hitomi." Van said her name with a curiously solemn tone, but when she looked up at him, she saw his expression change like that of a man pierced fatally from behind. She felt it cross him and penetrate her as well.

"Hitomi, we're waking up soon," he said instead. "Don't let go of my hand until then."

She wouldn't dare. In their dream world, Hitomi almost made it rain once more, almost made it storm this time and turn the skies an ashen gray and the rain to poured ash. She felt her mind swimming, her body falling deep within her, her heart threatening to kill her with its panic. The only thing she could hold on to was – he was right – her hand in his, his warm touch realer than earth.

"Van, I love you," she said, and for a moment it was like he was not going anywhere. He looked at her, and he wanted to kiss her, she could tell – she wanted the same – but he was vanishing, he was finished, there was no time le-

It all faded in an instant, every sensation disappearing suddenly into coarse bedsheets, but the warmth of his lips, the rain on their shoulders, remained.

* * * * *

Hitomi knew she would never see him again. She knew that there would never again be such a dream, such a conversation - this was the way things ended: by never ending. Over fifteen years' worth of tears broke their barrier deep within her, and she curled up to cry like she never did again.

When she was finished, she kept her eyes closed, and like a baby she comforted herself. There was lots of green, lots of blue, all of it very high and far away – earlier, she had wanted to fly and she certainly did, only that her feet never left the ground.

After a while, Hitomi surfaced from beneath her blankets, and the air she breathed in was cold and clear and dry. Longing for the stars, she pushed them impatiently off, and then shifted her head on her pillow. It was then that she felt it: something hard underneath, like a hefty rock.

She sat up suddenly and unraveled it, feeling ready for anything. Then the pillow was off, the offender visible, and Hitomi realized she wasn't.

Beneath her pillow was Escaflowne's crystal energist, red and shaped like a teardrop. Van proved better than his word.

-- _end._


End file.
